


Take This Pedestal and Shove It

by Lyrstzha



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Banter, Cleveland, F/M, Flash Fic, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-26
Updated: 2013-11-26
Packaged: 2018-01-02 16:53:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1059261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyrstzha/pseuds/Lyrstzha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Maybe you think I can't make my own decisions. <i>Maybe</i> you think I need to be protected from the truth.” Her fists slam into the wall on either side of his head, and Spike, who'd started to open his mouth to object, swallows hard instead. “Is <i>that</i> why I had to find out you're alive from <i>Andrew</i>?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take This Pedestal and Shove It

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shapinglight](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=shapinglight).



A lot of places don’t live up to their reputations, but Cleveland is just as bad as everyone says. Spike is absolutely sure about this when the very first problem he and Illyria tackle when they get into town is a haunted sausage factory. 

It takes four showers to get all the gunk and the grease off of him; it’s more like ten before the smell goes away. 

The first place they try to make their own in Cleveland is a little rathole of a room in a weekly-rate motel. The sheets are threadbare and reek of stale sex to Spike’s sensitive nose. That same nose leads him to a smear of old blood that stains the bilious wallpaper. One of the beds has been shoved in front of it, but that’s not enough to hide it from Spike. 

“This vile kennel is not fit dwelling for a god,” Illyria sneers at first look.

Spike rolls his eyes. “Well, princess, unless you're hidin' a small fortune I don't know about, it's this or the nearest bridge. Think how I feel. I'm sharin' this palace with _you_.”

She looks like she's still weighing the options, and possibly contemplating putting her fist through Spike's skull, while he strips the appalling sheets from the nearest bed to cover up the dingy window. They will never agree on who insists that they spend the first money they manage to scrape together on getting a second rathole across the hall so that they don't have to share.

And yet, for all of its squalor, the night he comes home to find Buffy perched gingerly on Spike's bed, looking like she's afraid – understandably – to let any bare skin touch the linens, Spike is ashamed of the room for the first time.

“Buffy!” For a moment that's all that comes out while his eyes go wide and hers just keep looking at him levelly, inscrutably. Finally he follows this with, “Shouldn't be sitting there, Slayer. Not entirely sure there aren't bedbugs in there somewhere – ”

Buffy cuts him off. “And _I'm_ sure you've been thinking way too much about what isn't good enough for me.” The way the words bite out between her clenched teeth is how Spike realizes with a pang of oddly bittersweet familiarity that Buffy is _angry_. She rolls to her feet gracefully and stalks toward him. “Maybe you think I can't make my own decisions. _Maybe_ you think I need to be protected from the truth.” Her fists slam into the wall on either side of his head, and Spike, who'd started to open his mouth to object, swallows hard instead. “Is _that_ why I had to find out you're alive from _Andrew_?”

“He promised – !” is as far as Spike gets before Buffy interrupts him again.

“You made him promise to _lie_ to me, you asshole!” She whacks one hand into Spike's shoulder hard. “That? That is _not okay_. There's no words for how not okay that is. It's like some kind of...of...,” she whacks him again in frustration, “...of _really_ not okay thing that's...beyond words.”

Spike tries valiantly not to smile, but there's just no help for it. “Regular wordsmith you are, as always,” he chuckles.

Buffy's eyes narrow dangerously. “And you think now seems like a good time for you to make fun of me? Really?”

Spike half-shrugs, but doesn't stop smiling at her. He's not sure he could if he tried, and he just can't summon the will to try. “Probably not. Just, I forgot how adorable you are when your dander's up and you can't use your words.”

Buffy sucks in a breath like she's going to start yelling, but all that sputters out is, “Dander! Adorable! You!” And then the breath goes out of her suddenly, and she lurches forward to close the small gap between them, throwing her arms around Spike so tightly his ribs creak and he's thankful that he doesn't really need to breathe. “Asshole,” she mutters into his chest, and he can feel the movement of her lips even through his coat.

Spike, never good at denying Buffy anything, wraps his arms around her and buries his face in her hair. She smells of airline ginger ale and cotton. “Sorry, love,” he murmurs back to her. “Just, I thought it would be better like this. You don't really...” And he's not quite sure how he wants to end that sentence. Need me anymore? Love me? Do better with me around?

Buffy pulls back just enough to look him in the eye, but her grip doesn't ease up. “Yeah,” she says. “I really do. Which you would know if you'd _talked to me_ instead of setting up stupid conspiracies and playing freaking resurrection-gate.” She shakes him a little, her hands digging into his shoulders. “This does _not_ happen ever again, are we clear?”

Spike merely looks at her for a moment, and the fierce glint in her eye sharpens. “Clear,” he finally says. “Next time I come back from the dead, I call you first.”

The desperate grip of Buffy's arms eases up a little, and her hands start to slide up and down over his back with an exploratory, proprietary air like she's checking to see if everything that belongs to her is right where she left it. “And you'd better believe we'll come back to the subject of you letting yourself get dead again, Mister. In a little while.” And she leans up to kiss him, surprisingly softly and surely for her, making it at once utterly familiar and completely new. The gentleness breaks Spike in ways that no rough beating ever could, and he opens for her with a shivering sigh that catches in his throat. He still thinks she could and should do better, but if he's what she wants, damned if he's going to be able to argue with her.


End file.
